⋆.˚🦋༘⋆Inheritance ⋆.˚🦋༘⋆

My mother never said

be careful with sadness, 

but I watched how she handled it - 

not as something heavy, 

but something that could spill

if carried carelessly. 

In the kitchen, between the kettle's rising breath

and the click of the gas turning off, 

she would stop - 

not fully still, 

just enough to pass through her face

and disappear again. 

A flicker, 

gone before it could be named. 

An emotion perhaps? 

I learned it like that, 

not in words, 

but in timing. 

How that small silence can be placed

between two ordinary sentences 

and alter them completely. 

How a voice can continue

while something else

waits just beneath it. 

Is it normal? 

Before I could realise

I do it now too. 

Mid conversation, 

mid laugh

I feel it arrives. 

That careful pause, 

that quiet adjustment, 

as if I am setting something down

no one else could see. 

It is not quite sadness. 

Not anymore. 

It is sharp it leaves behind, 

a habit of holding, 

a way of moving through the day

without disturbing what rests underneath. 

And sometimes I wonder, 

is this how it continues? 

Not passed from hand to hand, but carried forward, 

in the smallest hesitations, in the space before we speak.